Moolecular Characterization of a subset of Minicore Germplasm of Pigeon Pea for Yield

Abstract

Present investigation entitled "Molecular Characterization of a subset of minicoreGermplasm of pigeon Pea for yield" the field experiments were conducted in three replications of forty four genotypes for one year 2009-10 at crop research centre, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Modipuram Meerut (U.P.), 250110 India. Pigeonpea (Red gram), belonging to the family fabeceae and subfamily Papilionoideae, is one of the major grain legume grown including India, it has a large area under cultivation. India is the largest producer of pigeonpea in the world. Molecular markers are DNA sequence variants that can readily be detected and whose inheritance can be monitored. Molecular marker technology can facilitate the precise determination of the number, chromosomal location and individual and interactive effects of genes that control traits. A basic pre-requisite for any molecular breeding program is a robust set of polymorphic markers for the species under investigation. Such studies are required to ascertain the potential utility of these markers in analyzing molecular polymorphism in genotypes of pigeon pea. Microsatellites are the markers of choice for the development of a pigeonpea linkage map due to the genetic complexity of breeder's populations and high levels of heterozygosity in individual genotypes. Microsatellites offer several advantages compared to other molecular markers: they are highly reproducible, highly polymorphic, PCR-based and readily portable within a species. Markers were used for 44 pigeonpea genotypes for molecular characterization using 40 SSRs, 35 of which amplified interpretable bands. Fifteen of the primers revealed polymorphism among 44 pigeonpea breeding lines. 5 primers did not show any result to amplification process. The number of alleles detected ranged from 1 to 3 with a total of 58 alleles and an average of 1.4 alleles per locus. The most informative marker with polymorphism information content (PIC) of was CZ681940. CZ681951 showed the lowest PIC value (table no 5), while CZ681940 showed maximum PIC (0.0.68), because of well distributed three alleles among the genotype of C. cajan. Thirteen markers out of fifteen markers showed higher PIC value than average PIC value. Data from 58 SSR loci were only utilized for further statistical analysis due to monomorphic performance in 20 SSR markers. The highest number of alleles were observed in CZ681920, CZ681929, CZ681935, CZ681935, CZ681938 and CZ681940 CZ681928, CZ682008 (three alleles) followed by CZ681926, CZ681927, CZ681947, CZ681951, CZ681954, CZ681966, CZ681993, (two alleles), lowest number (single) of alleles were observed in 20 SSR primers. Morphological data was taken for Yield characters (Weight of 100 seeds, Seed yield/plant (gm)). Highest seed yield were found in genotype ICP -13270 (35.06 gm/plant) and lowest in ICP-14471(6.13 gm per plant) followed by average plant yield 19.2 gm/plant. Twenty genotypes gave gm/plant yield more than average. The average seed weight of 100 seeds was found to be 4.33 gm and was highest for the genotype ICP-14444 and lowest in the genotype ICP-12142 having seed weights 6.88gm and 3.53gm respectively.